The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
A. S. ByattRead
Why do we take pleasure in gruesome death, neatly packaged as a puzzle to which we may find a satisfactory solution through clues - or if we are not clever enough, have it revealed by the all-powerful tale-teller at the end of the book? It is something to do with being reduced to, and comforted by, playing by the rules.
Interpretation
The quote explores our fascination with horror and death in storytelling and the comfort found in having rules to follow.
A. S. Byatt highlights the paradoxical enjoyment we derive from narratives that involve gruesome death. These stories engage us as we piece together clues and seek solutions, suggesting that the structure governed by rules provides both a sense of comfort and distraction from the chaos of real life.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the appeal of crime novels and thrillers.
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.
Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.
I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.
Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.
The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.
We possess our body by chance and we are already pleased with it. If our physical bodies went through ten thousand transformations without end, how incomparable would this joy be! Therefore the sage roams freely in the realm in which nothing can escape, but all endures.
On the one hand maybe I’ve remained infantile, while on the other I matured quickly, because at a young age I was very aware of suffering and fear.
That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.
While a modicum of consciousness may have had survivalist properties during an immemorial chapter of our evolution – so one theory goes – this faculty soon enough became a seditious agent working against us … we need to hamper our consciousness for all we are worth or it will impose upon us a too clear vision of what we do not want to see … Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are – hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones
We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.
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